When I saw At Home With Books’ review of The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University, I knew that I’d have to read Kevin Roose’s memoir. While in college, Roose transferred to Liberty University for a semester.  Liberty, founded by Jerry Falwell, claims to “train champions for Christ.”  Roose, a student at Brown University, lives and studies at Liberty for a semester in order to get a good look at a school that may very well be the polar opposite of his own.

Part of what makes this memoir so successful is that Roose is a college student himself. Since he is struggling with the same questions of identity and one’s place in the world as his peers at Liberty, Roose sees the students at Liberty in a different light than an ordinary journalist or writer would.  Roose is a thoughtful writer who blends his background research seamlessly into descriptions of his life at Liberty.  He brings his friends to life and honestly writes of his own struggles, both to fit in at the school and to maintain a critical distance as a writer.

Often, mainstream press accounts of evangelical Christians seem to miss the mark.  Rather than investigating the appeal of this strand of Christianity, journalists just examine the charismatic leaders or political structures of the organizations.  In contrast, Roose is able to spend enough time with “ordinary” evangelicals to see their concerns, comforts, and struggles. He compassionately shows how Liberty students embrace and struggle with their religious convictions on a daily basis.

You could barely go more than a block in my hometown without bumping into a “Bible college.” (In fact, Jerry Falwell himself attended the same one my babysitter went to.)  While  my own family is not evangelical in the classic sense, we did grow up in a very conservative neck of the woods.  I have always called myself a Christian, but I have long struggled with finding my own comfort level within the language of contemporary Christianity.  Roose points out that immersion in religious communities parallels immersion in a new language.  At some point, you are far enough along that it all “clicks,” and you become fluent.  I could certainly see that happen in my own community and to my own friends.

What impressed me the most with The Unlikely Disciple is Roose’s journey. He comes to Liberty with an open enough mind that he can embrace some aspects of the school’s spiritual life.  For example, he finds great comfort in the prayers of his friends.  However, he is critical enough to also shed light on stances of evangelical Christianity that make many of us cringe, such as the condemnation of homosexuals and the limited role for women.  I imagined that the book would be just another bit of fodder in the dwindling culture wars.  Instead, I was surprised at how Roose’s story informed my own life as a Christian.

Steve Luxenberg is a senior editor for the Washington Post.  He has made his career asking people questions and getting them to talk about themselves.   Annie’s Ghosts: A Journey Into a Family Secret is about one person he has never been able to question: his aunt, Annie Cohen.  For almost all of his life, he believed that his mother was an only child.  In fact, she proudly proclaimed her only child status whenever she could work it into the conversation.  Near the end of her life, Steve and his siblings hear a rumor about an aunt who was sent away as a toddler. Only after his mother’s death does Luxenberg discover the truth: his mother’s sister, Annie, was placed in a public mental institution at the age of twenty-one.  She remained there for the rest of her life.

Annie’s Ghosts tells of Luxenberg’s exhaustive search to learn more about Annie.  Unable to ask his mother or his aunt all the questions he is dying to ask, he draws on his training as a journalist to gather all the facts he can about Annie.  What makes the book a wonderful read is Luxenberg’s ability to imagine the lost worlds of Detroit in the 1940s and 1950s, what life must have been like for his grandparents and his mother, what would have led them to place Annie in Eloise, a massive public hospital that served Wayne County, Michigan.  Not only does he explore a Detroit that no longer exists, he also tries to understand his immigrant grandparents, their lives in Ukraine, his cousin’s escape from the Nazis in World War II, and his father’s military experience in the Philippines.  What starts out as a simple discovery of his mother’s secret turns into an impressive social history of life in the first half of the twentieth century.

I loved how Luxenberg took us along on his search to learn about Annie.  From census records to hospital records to tracking down phone numbers of eighty-year old family friends, Luxenberg exposes his research throughout the book.  Anyone who has dabbled in genealogy or wondered about his or her past can learn from Luxenberg.  I was amazed at how much he was able to uncover from the little he had to work with.  Along with actually making his research seem exciting, Luxenberg ably tries to recreate the world of his aunt.  By doing so, he teaches us how Annie’s family and neighbors would have viewed Annie, how she would have lived in a massive institution like Eloise, and why his mother would choose to lie about her sister for all those years.

Luxenberg’s memoir is an impressive tribute to his family.  In addition, it’s an impressive piece of history.  By starting with this lost story in his own family, Luxenberg is able to shed light on thousands of stories that would otherwise be lost.   For that reason, I happily call it one of the best books I’ve read this summer.